The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Many mobile computing devices such as cellular phones, tablet computers, notebooks, etc., incorporate global positioning system (GPS) hardware and applications. When instantiated on the device, GPS applications communicate with a GPS transmitter or other GPS hardware on the device and a backend application server to provide a digital map of an area around the device's current position to a user. Map data is often pushed to the device from the application server based on the device position provided from the GPS hardware via the GPS application. For example, data for graphical representations of streets, buildings, and other geographical features may be pushed to the device and a GPS application running on the device may render the pushed data into images on a display screen of the device based on the current position of the device or based on a search of the mapping system using the device.